Spice Island (Grenada) Impressions 5 Madeys, Sauteurs

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Day seven, Saturday 20, 2013: In Madeys and Sauteurs, Grenada

 

On the beach in lower Sautuers, Grenada

I am reposting this blog in memory of  my most gracious, sister-in-law,Lena Mark-Andall, who passed away on Tuesday, December 21, 2016. I last visited her in Madeys, Greneda in 2013, a beautiful, green town where everyone has a garden, grow their own food, and make homemade products including cacao (or chocolate).  The visit brought me closer to nature. During this visit Lena shared with me the process of growing cacao and preparing it for the market.

              This morning in Madeys, I am listening to the sound of wind rushing through trees. The trees bend and bow; branches shake their bushy heads as wind passes. 

 I watch a branch that reminds me that it too is a living thing. It sends me a message, speaks to me and tells me that we share many earthly mysteries in common. 

We forget they are living, breathing entities. Sometimes the wind in trees sound like the sea rushing to shore or they mimic the sound of a sudden downpour of rain in its heaviest battering.

There are those trees that are tall and majestic that place bets on humans who dare to climb them and claim their fruit. There are island folks who are daring, take on the bets and win. They take home assorted nuts: coconuts, palm nuts, dates.

 A long coconut tree in the background sways perilously, threatens to fall on a rooftop. It has probably been there for years, has survived the lashing winds of tropical storms and hurricanes.

This spice island is an island of rain forests, rivers and lakes, an island where lives are sustained by agriculture and hard work in cocoa, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and banana groves.

Grenada waterfalls: http://www.grenadaexplorer.com/Waterfalls.htm

This Lesser Antilles (part of the Windward Islands) is quite different to the Island where I grew up. St. Thomas, Virgin Islands (Leeward Islands) lies at the end of the Lesser Antilles, just before the Greater Antilles begins. 

My island has no rainforests, lakes or rivers. Poor rainfall means the government has built huge water catchments against the hills and inhabitants must sometimes import water or distill seawater do daily chores. It is mandatory that residents, who live outside the city, build cisterns under their homes. Like many islands in the upper half of the Lesser Antilles, St. Thomas is subjected to periodic droughts. My birth island, Antigua, also located in the Leeward Islands, has also suffered devastating droughts which changed its social fabric.

I am surrounded by the lush green of Lena’s land.  The trees are numerous: mango, guava, banana, sugar apple, jamoon (bears a grape-like fruit), cocoa, golden apple, five fingers  (carambola) papaya (pawpaw), avocado (butter pear), cassava, coconut, almond, silk-cotton, cherry, breadfruit and pineapples.

Breadfruit tree

Cassava trees

             

 In the afternoon we walk to the town of Sauteurs. It is about one mile from the village of Madeys. Sauterus is the third largest town in Grenada. St. Georges is the largest town and is followed by Grenville. Other towns on the island include Gouyave and Victoria. 

There are numerous villages that lie on the outskirts of these towns. Many towns have French names as the French ruled the islands before the British took over in the 1600’s. Splatters of French patois is still spoken by an older, disappearing generation.

(See Grenada maps below)

http://www.grenadaexplorer.com/Map.htm

http://www.click2map.com/maps/mieka/Attractions

Along the way, the roadside and its gutters are filled with fallen ripe, yellow mangoes. I take photos of the flora and fauna and unusual small houses that are typical of the old Caribbean. 

 

 

 I am looking forward to posting a blog just on the small houses (See Spice Island (Grenada) Impressions  installment I) and two-room houses. They are quaint and colorful. I see them as an art form. 

 Our destination is Leapers’ Hill. It is the place where Caribs and Arawaks jumped to their death from a precipice into the 

Atlantic Sea rather than to be captured and enslaved. 

The sea below is hurling and surly. I take several pictures of the scene. My knee caps feel like water is running through them. It is the feel of the fear of heights that I have felt many times before.

There is a young teenage Grenadian girl hanging around the graveside which lies before the precipice. She is rather curious about us. She says she is waiting for choir practice to begin. There is a huge Catholic Church and a school in the vicinity of Leaper’s Hill. From this hill we can see another church on a hill in the distance.  It is an Anglican Church and is not as large as the Catholic Church in this vicinity.

Catholic Church at Leapers' Hill in Sauteurs, Grenada.

    

  

I take a picture with her and tell her to give me her address so I could send her the photo. She says her mother would punish her if she gets a letter from a foreign person or a foreign country.

She seems rather relaxed talking to strangers. I am thinking she could be easily kidnapped. My husband gives her a small tip when we leave to walk to lower Sauteurs which lies on the seaside. 

View of the sea from Leapers' Hill.

The seaside in lower Sauteurs is rough and surfers’ waves land, lashing the grayish beach. There is nobody in the water but a few fisher boats can be seen way out beyond the bashing waves.

                              

A view of Lower Sauteurs from Leapers' Hill

A view of lowerSauteurs from Leapers' Hill

The beach side, Lower Sauteurs

Emmanuel Mark standing on the jetty in Sauteurs

We stop at a little two-room shop to have a drink before we walk back to upper Sauteurs. 

      My husband runs into his niece’s husband, Blaze.
My husband buys a round of drinks. He drinks a Carib beer, Blaze drinks a Guinness, and I have a new drink made of lemon, lime and angastora bitters. 

 This was the beginning of drinking many angastora drinks. We found it thirst-quenching and soothing to the palate.  We bought a whole case of it when we returned to St. Georges. Perhaps someone will soon import it to Europe.

Roti

Angostora Bitter drink

 

My husband and I share a roti. It is not as delicious as the roti from the Blue Danube Shop and Restaurant, but it is good.

After that we head for a bus that would take us to Madeys. We sit for a long time as we have to wait for the bus to fill up before it takes off. It is so with all buses in Grenada.

Back at Lena’s we have a dinner of boiled breadfruit, dumplings, green bananas, peas and fish. Lena’s does not eat meat. Our meals, except for the fish, are provisions from her land; our dessert, pawpaw, mango, sugar-apple, sour-sap, banana, five fingers, all plucked or cut off trees growing on her land.

Day 8, Sunday, 21 July, 2013

 After a sweltering-hot and restless night, which was no different from the previous night, I wake up to the smell of frying coconut oil. I learn that Lena is making salt-fish cakes for breakfast. After a cold shower, I dress for a lazy Sunday. Breakfast is ready. It consists of salt-fish cakes, baked beans and homemade wheat bread. Assorted fruit are set on the table. 

Our hot drink is cocoa. The cocoa drink is made from cocoa balls which are grated and boiled with milk.  

Fresh cacao pod

The process of making these balls begins with the picking of the cocoa pod. After the pod is picked, you crack the pod open and take out the seeds. The seeds are then fermented for one week. The fermentation takes place in a special house. Banana leaves are place over the beans and then locked up in the airless house for one week. It is a fermentation process. The beans are taken out and dried in the sun. When the beans are dry, they are roasted and the shells removed. The beans are put in a mortar and beaten with a pestle until they become an oily dough. They are formed into small balls and allowed to harden for a few hours. Then they are ready to be grated and used to make hot chocolate.

Dried cacao beans

My husband and I take a stroll around Lena’s neighborhood.  We walk past a simple, tiny house with the most beautiful garden.

There are bamboo trees, cassava, pigeon peas planted along our path.

 

 

 Seeing this is invigorating. The green vegetation is welcoming and one can feel the renewing of life that is taking place.  There is the temptation to rush over and hug a branch or a tree greeting us with it flowers.

                                                                                              

We can see ravines where small rivers run into big rivers.  We walk pass a new house. It looks like one of those built by a Grenadian expatriate, but why not a successful local Grenadian, I tell myself. They too save money and build spacious houses.  I have seen a few in St. Georges and have met a few people who rent properties.

 

 I stop at a tree whose unusual roots I first saw in Lisbon, Portugal. I wonder if it is the same type of tree or if it is an illness. I am not a botanist, so this mystery remains unsolved. It is a possible research project. 

Tree (with large roots/swollen trunk?) in Madeys, Grenada

Tree (with large root/swollen trunk) in Lisbon, Portugal

We pass two older women sitting on a veranda. My husband chats with them awhile when they recognize him. They ask him who the white woman is? He introduces me as his wife. I give a big smile

  

Further down, a brown dog lies lazily in the road. This is a common picture in the tropics—stray mutts having siestas in yards and in the middle of roads. This one looks well-fed. As a matter of fact, all the stray mutts look well fed. Maybe he has an owner.

It is very hot now and we retraced our steps, now walking a little faster, to Lena’s house.

  

Lena prepares a dinner of fungi and fish and vegetables (breadfruit, green banana, carrots). It is followed by a homemade drink which has flavors of ginger, passion fruit and lemon in it. After dinner we spend time chatting with friends and family as Lena informs us that she has internet service but must first figure out which password on her list is the correct one.

As for natures’ creatures, here in Madeys, I have seen the occasional green or gray lizard, and twice a rat dashing across the large, half-moon shaped veranda. The rat is always so swift, I have no time to react.

Athea Romeo-Mark